HZ1AB's Version of Post Gulf War Syndrome 
by Jeff Hamblin, G4KIB

During the gulf war, we had little or no access to the club. Most of our
equipment was stored away in cupboards and the station was taken over by
the military for MARS purposes. There was a lot of MARS traffic during the
early stages but this later died off in favor of direct telephone calls.

We had been off the air for about a year and when we finally had full
access to the club at the end of "Desert Storm" every one was hungry for
radio and we suddenly had a large contingent of willing enthusiasts. Brion
Gilbert was then the prez and he was primarily responsible for what I
regard as the club's finest hour.

The military had been using our KT34 and the Log for MARS operations.
Ten-Tec had donated several sets of RX/TX/Titan Amps all in 19" racks. We
were allowed to play with and use these to the delight of many appreciative
members.

Brion came up with plans to extend our Rohn tower from 70 feet to 135 feet,
to refurbish the KT34-XA, build a couple of mono banders, reconstruct the
beverage and to construct the Rhombic.

For the rhombic Brion had acquired four 90-foot wooden poles. These had
been lying around on the ground for quite some time waiting for somebody to
dig the holes. The holes had been started but were hard to make, as the
ground was almost solid rock. In the end, through Ron's military contacts,
we had one of their contractors bore four holes about 8 feet deep and 3
feet wide. The poles had climbing stakes hammered in to their full length,
except the first 18 feet. Brion had also fabricated a three-inch pipe and a
heavy-duty rotor arrangement for mounting future antennas. This was
pre-mounted onto the nearest Rhombic pole (see pic. xx) but unfortunately
was never used.

Pic. xx shows the top section of the tower that contained the heavy duty
thrust bearings, the new rotor and the pipe. This whole structure was stood
up vertically and guyed down.

The KT34-XA and the two mono banders were manually lifted into position,
cabled up, tested and adjusted, especially the gamma matching elements for
the mono banders. Pigtails were brought down to the bottom of this top
section so that the main cables could be connected straight in after the
tower section holding the antennas was erected.

The wall in the background of pic. xx was where the beverage was mounted.
This was spaced about two feet from the top of the wall at round 6feet high
and extended all the way up the wall. There was a local, remotely
controlled switching box to switch the beverage in two directions.

Pic. xx. shows the, lifting the top tower section with the KT34-XA and two
mono banders being lifted into position with the maximum extension of the
crane. The men at the top were professional Filipino riggers. During this
time, they scurried up and down the 135 foot tower several times without
ever getting tired. In fact, most of our members were too heavily built to
have climbed the tower and I got tired just watching the Filipino riggers.
Our resident climber, Terry Posey (N4KT at the time) can be seen with a
walking stick after being hit by a moped in Hong Kong. Terry's new job was
joint antenna designer, coordinator and as it turned out, photographer, all
rolled into one. Even so, once a climber always a climber and many a time
he would leave his stick at the base of the tower to climb up and fix a few
problems.

The tower was now high enough to erect at 160m Delta Loop. This was Terry's
baby.

The rhombic was fed at both ends by 7/8 ' heliax that Brion had also
acquired as scrap. Various lengths of the foam cable had to be meticulously
joined together with good quality Andrews connectors. The heliax fed 50/600
ohm baluns, shown in pics xx and xx. The label inside says, "Constructed by
Brion C Gilbert N0AE, Procured by Terry A. Posey  N4KT. The labels were
stuck in just prior to erection by Terry who was probable thinking that
they would be found long after the oil had run out in Saudi Arabia.  

Both the near end and far end heliax was fed into the shack via flexible
coax pig tails which came in through a hole in the outer wall. This meant
that one end could be fed directly from the Titan TX and the other end
terminated into an oil can dummy load, in the shack. The distance to the
far end of the Rhombic was great, but the losses were negligible at HF with
the 7/8 " heliax.

Pic. xx shows the log periodic in all it's glory. After the completion of
the tower and rhombic, the log which tuned from 40m to 10m, was used as a
standard to compare the new antennas. The performance of the new antennas
was so good, that the log was put on the back burner for a long time
afterwards.

Pic. xx shows Thomas Carlson, Terry Posey and Brion Gilbert in fairly happy
mood. The cable in the picture was only power cable belonging to the military.

Brion also built a switchable patch panel, which was fixed on the desk so
that the operator could switch all the transmitting antennas from a single
switch. It was also possible for the operator to simply switch the
direction of the Rhombic and the beverage.

After many, many, many week ends of hard work by every one on the HZ1AB
team at this time, we were all just ready to cease all further work and to
do some operating. We were QRV on all bands and we were ready to operate
with a fair share of good rigs and amps. This we did, but that is another
story.

Antenna details as "Thomas saw it":

A. A 42 meter tower with:
        -  a KT34XA for 14/21/28 MHz
        -  a 3 el monobander for 18 MHz
        -  a 4 el monobander for 24 MHz
        -  a support for a Delta Loop for 160 meters
 
B. The Rhombic:
This incredible piece of work was 270 m long and 105 m wide at 21 m height
and 3 loops of wire. It was terminated at each end with a 600/50 ohm balun
and aimed at the central USA, passing through Europe on its way.  Why a
600/50 Ohm balun?  Because we had a run of coax to each end of the rhombic
and by feeding one end and having a 50 ohm dummy at the other we had a 600
ohm terminated Rhombic that we could aim in two directions: USA short and
long path.
 
C. Beverage:
Two parallel wires, 630 m long, the direction being approximately the same as
the rhombic, and switchable in either direction.
 
D. Log Periodic:
6 - 30 MHz at 18 m high

A little known fact: When tensioning the Rhombic wires, the calculated
weight conveniently turned out to be the same weight as Terry.
Consequently, Terry was used as the tensioning counter weight. "We couldn't
have done it without you, Terry!"